Additional funding announced in the latest Federal Budget could make data sharing easier for financial advisers, according to an industry specialist, hitting on one of the key technology issues for the profession.
The May Budget papers announced there would be $62 million allocated over two years from the 2026-27 financial year to extend the operation and participation of the consumer data right.
Accurium head of education Mark Ellem said on a recent webinar: “When I’ve been on in-person presentations, I’ve always asked ‘who knows what the consumer data right is?’ Not many hands go up.
“The first thing I had to do was Google, ‘What is consumer data right?’ The consumer data right is an Australian government initiative, and what it does is enable individuals and businesses to simply share their data with accredited third parties to access better products, services and financial insights.”
As an example, Ellem said that if a client is dealing with a business and questions as to whether they are offering a good deal or service, they may look to someone else to provide that service. Rather than having to gather information and provide it to them, the consumer data right allows the person to log on and authorise that they wish to share data the current institution has about them with a second institution.
“They can then come back to you with an offer or proposal for the service. The consumer data right is currently active in the banking and energy sector, which means with banking and energy suppliers you can look at what you are currently getting and see if you can get a better deal,” he said.
“You can use the consumer data right to share your data securely. Now the Government is looking at expanding that to enable taxpayers to share certain ATO-held data.”
Ellem said he believes this may have the potential to resolve the issue of being able to share data between financial professionals such as tax agents or financial advisers in the SMSF sector.
“Currently, if you’re not the personal tax agent of an individual, if you’re the tax agent of the SMSF, or you’re a financial adviser, then you don’t have access to important information about your client transfer balance cap,” he said.
“What space do they have? Have they treated the bring forward rule? How much cap space have they got back in their personal transfer balance cap? What is their personal transfer balance cap? Will they get indexation with an index on 1 July?
“This move may resolve this issue of being able to share data so the individual will be able to say, ‘Look, I want to share my ATO data with my financial adviser, and they can have access to this information, which means when they’re putting together strategies, it will be based on information details that the ATO has.’”
